And so they go and come, carrying out the little boxes, until nearly a
score are deposited upon the pavement of the courtyard.

The abstraction of the specie completed, the sentries set by the
dining-room door, as also those sent to guard the entrance-gate, are
called off; and the band becomes reunited by the treasure, as vultures
around a carcass.

Some words are exchanged in undertone. Then each, laying hold of a
box--there is one each for nearly all of them--and poising it upon his
shoulders, strides off out of the courtyard.

Silently, and in single file, they pass across the cattle corral, on
into the garden, down the central walk, and out through the gap by which
they came in.

Then on to the glade where they have left their horses.

These they remount, after balancing the boxes upon their saddle-bows,
and there securing them with trail-ropes.

Soon as in the saddle they move silently, but quickly away; the
half-blood going along with them.

He, too, has a horse, the best in the troop--taken from the stable of
the master he has so basely betrayed, so pitilessly plundered.

And that master at the moment nearly mad! Raging frantically around the
room where they are left confined, nearly all the others frantic as he.
For scarce any of them who has not like reason.

In the darkness groping, confusedly straying over the floor, stunned and
stupified, they reel like drunken men; as they come in contact
tremblingly interrogating one another as to what can have occurred.

By the silence outside it would seem as if everybody were murdered,
massacred--coloured servants within the house, colonists without--all!

And what of Colonel Armstrong's own daughters? To their father it is a
period of dread suspense--an agony indescribable. Much longer continued
it would drive him mad. Perhaps he is saved from insanity by anger--by
thoughts of vengeance, and the hope of living to accomplish it.

While mutually interrogating, one starts the suggestion that the whole
affair may be a _travestie_--a freak of the younger, and more
frolicksome members of the colonist fraternity. Notwithstanding its
improbability, the idea takes, and is entertained, as drowning men catch
at straws.

Only for an instant. The thing is too serious, affecting personages of
too much importance, to be so trifled with. There are none in the
settlement who would dare attempt such practical joking with its chief--
the stern old soldier, Arms